黄泉がえり - Afterlife Return
by Arashi Leonhart
Summary: The dead do not return, but they still haunt the living. Ryougi combats a part of what she has lost, controlled by the last family connected to her past. Entry for the 2014 Beast's Lair fic contest.


Yomigaeri

黄泉がえり

* * *

黄泉がえり- Yomigaeri – "Underworld Reversal" or "Afterlife Return"

蘇り- Yomigaeri – "Resurrection"

* * *

The festivities might look strange to an outsider. Despite the autumn air, workers were busy stringing up fake cherry blossoms. Streamers of green and blue hung from poles and the colors of springtime marked the signs announcing the celebration. Unlike a ceremony such as Obon, the solemn feeling was shot through with liveliness. It was a time to think of life, despite the decay of death that awaited them the moment they stepped beyond the grounds.

Ikegami Honmon Temple's park was dedicated for that week to the life of its patron bodhisattva as was practice in the middle of October. Temple workers sought to birth something enjoyable as their founder was thought to have done when he passed on, creating banners and streamers for the event. Workers smiled and joked, children came after school to play, and temple regulars were treated with energy and vibrancy to an otherwise solemn place.

Irony laughed. A celebration of death through a festival of life was an invitation of duality. In placing one alongside the other, it invited the two to be joined.

The celebration of such opposed things could not go unnoticed forever.

* * *

Reien Academy was what could be called strict. Mass was held punctually. Students were expected to attend every class and had no extraneous excuse for tardiness. Meals were only offered at specific times and snacking was prohibited. When not in prayer, class, or at meals, students were required to be in their dorms studying. Despite the wonderful landscape of gardens and fountains and the pleasant colors as Fall took full hold, most students did not find time to enjoy the cool air. Even leaving the grounds was barred under normal circumstances except by permission that was acquired in advanced.

So Azaka was delighted at being out of school in the middle of a week, in the middle of a semester. Even if she was allowed to leave regularly to help Fujino with her doctor's appointments. Even if she had frequent weekend breaks that she had been spending training under Touko. Even if that reason was technically to work. Even if that reason was troublesome. Perhaps even a little bit strange, since it was to offer help to a religious ceremony that was not Christian in any shape or form. She was granted permission due to the extenuating circumstances—meaning forged requests for Azaka's family.

However, the forces of balance in the world conspired against her. To be free to leave grounds and participate in an event, her own work for that event all in the preparation and leaving her free to enjoy the day itself, Azaka must have been required to pay for the exchange rate.

"Why do I have to spend it with you?!"

Energy always bubbled beneath Azaka's skin. She was sure no such thing occurred within Shiki Ryougi. In fact, Azaka was certain that the dour woman was capable of sucking the energy and vitality of the world around her in like a black hole, never to return. It happened every time she opened her mouth. "I didn't decide on this," Shiki said.

Azaka took her flashlight and wove it right in Shiki's face; the elder woman waved it away like an annoying bug. "You could've said 'no,' you know! I'm capable of taking care of this myself!"

Shiki scowled at that but said nothing. Azaka had been under Touko's wing for a few months but nobody except Touko knew what exactly Azaka was doing or how well she was doing it.

"It'd have been perfect to show how much I've improved," Azaka mumbled.

Probably a product of the surroundings, as well. Despite the celebration tinged with the touch of death, it was a festival of sights and sounds, music and dancing—something that, if nothing else, Azaka had a strong affinity for.

Hands in her jacket pockets to ward them from the autumn chill, Shiki continued to stroll on down the street as unconcerned as ever. Yet for all her bluster, Azaka kept a close eye on the woman, certain that beneath the calm surface, there was something upset by the situation they found themselves in.

* * *

It was the scent of the supernatural. Not an uncommon thing to the superstitious—and death was certainly a superstitious topic—but it was a condition that cried out for attention more than the simple whispers and rumors of things just out of sight and mind. The kind of situation Garan no Do was intimately familiar and experienced with.

"Ten different occurrences in the last two weeks," Touko said. "All centered around the Ikegami Honmon Temple while they're finishing up prep for Oeshiki." Oeshiki was the celebration of a Japanese bodhisattva, Nichiren, and his miraculous life.

The redheaded magus sat in her usual place behind her desk, reports strewn about her desk amidst other random things: a box of staples, a book that looked like it predated the printing press, a wooden toy top, the leftovers of an unfinished sandwich, and a rapidly shrinking cigarette in an ashtray. More than half of the reports included photos taken of the temple and park, a rather large area of greenery amidst Tokyo's urban landscape. All in all, it looked strangely as if Touko was actually busy with something of importance.

Shiki, for her part, appeared as indifferent as ever, staring at one of the television screens tuned into the local news. Looking, looking—for what, nobody but Shiki knew.

Touko smiled, like the silence was a challenge. She leaned back in her chair as if to enjoy the show. "So I have to dangle the interesting bits in front of you like a carrot?"

There was a small snort to signify Shiki's discontentment. "You always seem to think that the stranger things that happen are more interesting." She almost sounded regretful—possibly aware of the irony that she would be the one to point it out.

"I'm a magician blessed with a demon hunter and ESPer for students. I have no other way of looking at it." She grinned, peering at Shiki over the top of her glasses. "Except, perhaps, troublesome as well, getting my pawns to dance to the right tune."

Shiki sighed and held out a hand. Touko passed one of the open files. A brief police report and statement from witnesses. A worker at the temple reporting what was thought to be a simple case of trespassing. Signs of disruption in the cemetery. "So?" Shiki asked, once she was finished reading.

Touko handed her a second file. Now a missing person's report: the worker from before last heard from the day she made the police statement.

"Before you ask, the police looked into it, and that's when it starts turning interesting," Touko said. She handed Shiki the next file, but summarized its contents. "When it was clear the first person was not going to turn up, more workers looked into it and disappeared as well. Within five days, the police had half a dozen missing. So they set up a taskforce and patrolled the site themselves. _Then_ police officers started going missing."

While Shiki perused through the different files, Azaka made her presence known, finished with the training tasks Touko had assigned her to complete in another room. She slipped a glove off as she entered, shoving it unnecessarily violently into her pocket. "Alright, you're showing that woman favoritism," the teenager complained. "I asked about it first!"

"Now, Azaka," Touko started.

"No, you tell me what's going on too," Azaka said. She tore the next set of papers from Touko's hands before Shiki could look at them, then stalked off to the opposite side of the desk as if expecting Shiki to pursue her.

Shiki did not. "They found a body eventually," she said, not quite a question.

"Your expectations for this world sure are top notch," Touko said. She pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. "The first disappearance turned up two days ago. No signs of a struggle. No cause of death. She seems to have simply passed on, like her heart gave out on her without rhyme or reason."

Azaka gave a violent shudder, not-quite hiding her face behind the file in her hands.

Touko's expression was sympathetic. "You wanted to know, Azaka." Leaning back in her chair, she raised a new cigarette to her lips. "I'm not even sure I want you involved, either. It has the sense of something you're not yet ready for, perhaps."

That brought the paper in Azaka's face down, a frown marring her face. "You'd send nii-san, if he were here."

"True," Touko said, "but my instincts also tell me that he would be left alone for the most part." She smiled around her tobacco. "Care to say why, Shiki?"

Despite her supposed disinterest, Shiki did seem to be leaning in toward the discussion rather than assuming the entire leave-me-alone body language that made up her demeanor most of the time. "The people that make it back, along with that first report, they talk about seeing people?"

"The departed, to be specific. Ghosts of friends and family long gone." Touko nodded. "A person in grief claiming to see the recently departed is a common enough occurrence." The cigarette between her lips pointed upwards as if to follow her gaze while she stared off into the unseen sky. She slipped her glasses off and absently wiped them clean with the tails of her blouse. "But before he left, I had Mikiya look up some things on some of the people mentioned in the reports. Nobody has had family or friends—so far as Mikiya could find—that have croaked within the past two or three years."

Both of the younger women perked up at the mention of their shared interest. Touko smirked, which soured their expressions in return. Teasing them about the man while he was off for his training had become something of a small pleasure in her life. It almost made up for not having him around to do the gopher work she now had to get done herself.

"That's…" Azaka trailed off.

"Strange, huh?" Shiki made a faint nod.

Touko twiddled with the glasses between her fingertips. "I suppose grief periods run differently for people," she eyed Shiki significantly at that, "but a few years sure says something when they don't have a coma in between."

Shiki rolled her eyes and looked away.

"Mikiya only had time to look into a few of them, but circumstantially it's enough for me, coupled with the bodies that started turning up." Touko motioned to the files that had not been touched. "I gather that by now, all the other disappearances have shown up as bodies as well. We only have three still missing, all police officers." She snorted. "All physically-fit."

"So, you're expecting trouble," Azaka said. "A fight. Because they're possessed or something."

Touko looked to Azaka, slipping into the closest thing she had to her instructor-tone. "Rather, the issue is the shared location." The magus tapped the remaining files with her finger. "Even without a source like what happened at the Fujou building, if enough rumors spread and a pattern of experiences gather at one place, events could trigger on their own. Like a curse."

Azaka looked doubtful, warily staring at Shiki from the corner of her eye. "You said something about demons before, a few weeks ago."

A frosty smile from Touko congratulated the younger Kokutou. "Not dissimilar to them, although not entirely the same concept. This sounds more like wraiths or apparitions. If that." She seemed to consider for a moment, then continued. "Azaka, how much have you read or learned about gestalt theory?"

"Er…"

"So, nothing, I take it?" Touko gave a helpless shrug. "Here's a simpler idea, then. You know those supposed psychics on TV, right? The ones that say they're communicating with the dead related to a random person in the audience? Their trickery could be said to be based on gestalt ideas. You take a person, you go broad enough with statements until eventually, you reach something that they have personally experienced. 'Someone here has had a close relative die due to heart failure.' A common cause of death and a broad 'close relative.'"

Azaka's gaze was up to one side in thought, very clearly attempting to preempt the point Touko was making. "People seeing the departed, but not recently dead…"

"Say that this psychic actually had the ability to conjure spirits to communicate with. It's the opposite of the direction you are led to believe—the spirit comes later, the identification from the still-living is first."

"So…" Azaka said, "You think whoever it is causing this has some kind of ability to make those broad associations along with something that brings out apparitions?"

"Something of the sort. There are…talents…out there that resemble that description. I would gather that Shiki understands what I'm talking about more, given her history."

Both women's gazes fell to the third person in the room, kimono-clad and silent up until then. A displeased expression marred her face. "Back to boring. I don't care about trickery like that."

Azaka almost jumped in place. "I'll handle it, then." She lifted her chin like she could stand over Shiki with it raised in superiority.

"I guess Azaka can go along, but you really need to be the one to go, Shiki."

A dull glare. "Why?"

"Oeshiki isn't complete without Shiki," Touko said.

Both Azaka and Shiki looked displeased once more.

"But I am serious. You, perhaps more than anyone, need to."

"Whyyyyyyy," Azaka whined.

Touko ignored her, eyeing Shiki with a thoughtful look. "What if I brought up something related to _your_ family?" Shiki's head snapped back Touko's way, causing the redhead a quick laugh. "Not directly. But there was one other fact that Mikiya scrounged up that caught my interest. About a trio of siblings that were recently interred at the temple."

* * *

A family said to have special eyes. The sighting of long-dead apparitions. Asagami and Fujou, two names long since disassociated with the Ryougi. The third, said to be the strongest of all four.

"So we still have three people unaccounted for," Azaka said, "three police officers that disappeared in the middle of the night seven days ago. And these Nanaya might be inhabiting their bodies."

It was evening, long after everything had shut down in the temple proper, the monks staying there either finishing meals or in prayer. The street they ventured down was quiet and unlit, forcing Azaka to lead the way with an oversized torch that she flicked on and off. Whether from annoyance or nervousness, Shiki was not sure.

"And we think these Nanaya are responsible…why, exactly? All you said was they hunted demons. Killing people and stealing their bodies seems like the opposite of what good they might have been doing."

Shiki almost laughed at that. Almost. "_Good_ might be relative, Azaka. They did it because they were skilled at it, not because it did the world anything."

"Like you, huh?"

Shiki ignored the jab. "Their abilities, so far as I know, are also in line with this. Some had the power of possession. Others could read minds." Really, it was something of a strange culmination of the four families. Nanaya the eye-technique users. Nanaya the psychics. Nanaya the assassins. Three things the other families supposedly mastered, all within their repertoire.

"But _why_?" Azaka sighed. "Why do it? I don't care about what they do, I just wanna know why." It had bothered her the entire trip, the thought that these spirits would cause unjust harm for no other reason than by merely existing. All of those that had disappeared had eventually turned up dead, with only the police officers now unaccounted for.

"That's _why_ Touko thinks an apparition or wraith to begin with. All they want is to live again." Wraiths were nothing more than the echoes of beings that had attachments to the world. Apparitions were the remnants of thoughts or feelings. Assuming the Nanaya were of the former, they might be able to conjure the latter out of the memories of those they faced—the dead that witnesses claimed to have seen.

It was, after all, what they were good at—death, and the reminder of death.

Azaka still did not look convinced, looked unwilling to accept the possibility of no higher reasoning. So she quieted, waving the mechanical light back ahead of them.

The cemetery grounds were a stone's throw from the main temple space, all of a short stroll down the street that bisected the park's greenery. In the dim twilight, it made for a strange maze of monolithic shapes and masses, varied in height and regularity like the remains of a child's building block playground. Despite Azaka waving her light between the stonework, it seemed the kind of place where something could lurk just between gaps and one would never know even if the light passed right over them.

"Sure would be nice if they had street lamps here," Azaka said.

_People don't want to shine light on the dead. _

It was not a voice, nor even the whispers within the mind. It was more like a touch, fingertips playing across the skin, like the sensation itself transferred the idea directly to the mind. Despite being voiceless, it carried with it the sense of masculinity.

"Did you…?" Azaka looked to Shiki, clearly certain it was not Shiki communicating, yet certain it was. The feeling, whatever it was, carried with it the overwhelming sense of Shiki-ness.

Shiki's hawk-like glare burned through the dim lighting even as it stared at nothing in particular.

That same sensation washed over them both again, like the touch of a close friend or lover. For Azaka, it was a strange feeling, having never been acquainted with Shiki before the accident, never knowing that side to her rival. It was undeniably the feeling of _Shiki_, however, like there was another besides the woman standing at her side, reaching out from the beyond. Truly a power of a spirit, as Touko had described: the strong emotions and memories of those passed on, anchored to the world like a curse.

As if Shiki were the one dead.

"I get it," Shiki said under her breath. Louder, so as to be heard wherever it came from, she said, "So, it is true, what the records say about you. Huh."

"What?" Azaka hissed.

The presence in their minds changed, now clearly a different person—yet with the same strange tone to the mind's eye. _Ryougi. Yes, we know you too and what makes you. He speaks even within your silence._

The leader of the clan—said to possess eye techniques that read the surface thoughts of a person. In a place of death and the dead, a passerby's thoughts were drawn inevitably to the other side. If he could read Ryougi's thoughts…

Azaka shuddered, then stomped her foot. "This is really annoying. Come out, you freaks!"

The sensation ignored her. Instead, it shifted once more, somehow seeming like a separate Shiki was reaching out to the pair. _Yo. Long time. Still no see._

Shiki stared. Although the presence was ephemeral, seemingly everywhere and nowhere at once, she could imagine looking in a mirror and seeing him grinning back. She could imagine it so clearly—and what's more, as a thought of one untainted by what she now saw in everything—

SHIKI.

He looked back at her, no lines upon his body. Like before, now after.

He was already dead. There were no lines to see now.

Long time, still no see. She could imagine him saying that, irreverent and sarcastic, biting in a way she mimicked but could not fully reclaim.

"Then come out here where I can see," Shiki said. She focused her gaze and peered into the tangled web of death that stood before her.

Crumbling tombstones. Burning incense. Bones and rotting flesh melting away. Decaying wood evaporating to dust. Names etched by family and friends disappearing into time. Three human forms nearer to the center of the cemetery, all peering back at her.

"Eyes of Purity," Shiki said to Azaka, confirming aloud her suspicions. "Mind reading of some kind. They're seeing into the thoughts others have of the dead and reflecting that back." She huffed. "Wraiths that make apparitions. An entire circle of death."

"Can…" Sobered by the confirmation, Azaka tried to see what it is that Shiki had managed to find, "I mean, are the people still alive?"

"No," Shiki said. "They can't share space with the living. Only the dead."

_Yet we can share with the living now,_ one said in its own "voice." With their secrets being exposed, they exposed themselves, stepping out from behind columns of stone to face the intruders.

Azaka moved her light over their faces: the missing police officers. Their vacant expressions and faintly-glinting eyes, however, suggested more than a simple solution. One, the more svelte of the two males, pulled a snap baton free of a holster at his belt.

Shiki stared at that one, the threads of power she could feel reaching out to her coming from him. "Get out of my head, dead man."

_Dead man? _Rather than SHIKI, a Nanaya bubbled up to the surface. _From one who walks around as lifeless as you, I take that only as irony._

They closed in on each other slowly, circling around rows of tombstones separating them and stepping over the remains of items left for the dead and unclaimed by the temple.

"The dead ought to stay dead," Shiki said. "I'll see to that."

The SHIKI in her mind's eye sneered, and the man closed in on her, weapon raised to strike.

* * *

The two remaining body snatchers dissolved further back into the cemetery darkness, though that whisper-like sense that they still watched remained. Azaka took one glance to Shiki's situation, then sped off after them, leaping over a row of the gravestones in pursuit. It looked as if they were acting collectively, leaving Azaka with the two siblings.

Of course, finding a pair of trained assassins in the dark was a daunting task. When it was clear she would not find them so easily, she took off full-tilt down the narrow aisle she found herself in, took the next corner, and made her way to what she considered the centermost area with the largest open walkway. The jagged shapes separating her from her enemy loomed over her, still as ever, giving nothing up. She tried to aim the spotlight in her hands between the rows of stone to find something human-shaped.

A stone flew her way, smashing her torch bulb like it was a target bull's eye.

"That flashlight cost me 5000 yen, you bastards!"

The shadowy figures moved just beyond her, she was sure, their presences never quite leaving her mind. She spun in place, took in her surroundings and what options she had left to her, then slipped on a leather-like glove from her pocket .

"Don't wanna light up the dead, huh?" Azaka fell to a crouch and raised her voice, sing-song aria echoing through the quiet of the sleeping dead. "_Mezzoforte!_"

Her gloved fist struck against the stone ground. Like a match head, flames licked up in its wake, illuminating the graveyard and highlighting the shadows moving between the columns marking the dead.

Two shadows.

Hissing through her teeth, Azaka aimed for another light-up past the shoulders of the larger figure at a grave that had sticks of half-used incense. "_Pianissimo!_" she called, and the prayer paraphernalia sparked like fireworks. The shadow of the man was given depth while at the same time causing them to flinch and turn toward the source of the sudden sparklers.

Azaka took the opening and charged, planting her hands on one gravestone and spinning, bringing a crescent-kick to the man's head. He ducked beneath the blow and her heel hit the same gravestone with a shudder, shaking dirt and dust from the monolith. Moving somewhere between a spider and a leopard, the man-shaped form hunched on all fours, then sprang up at Azaka, still bunched up as if to plow all four limbs into her chest.

"_Uggffffortissimo!_"

The blow from her assailant carried Azaka back, bashing her partially against the gravestone, but she coughed out her spellcraft, her arm extended into the side of her attacker. Unlike what one would expect from a normal human body, it did not combust as the oils and tissue set aflame. Instead, like a rocket, the fire spewed forth from the point of impact and rocketed the man a dozen meters to one side.

Azaka hit the ground with a nasty crash that knocked the wind from her. Her attacker plowed right through a stone marker some meters away.

The light from the first spell was snuffed out. Azaka fought against the dark spots forming in her vision. She attempted to pick herself up but found her body screamed at her from within to stay still.

Without illuminating flames and the twilight of the sky having faded away, Azaka could only just make out the smaller figure that loomed over her.

_Don't you have ones who have passed on you wish to see?_

Still cringing against the pain, Azaka merely stuck her tongue out.

The last incense stick shot up like a rocket and exploded like a firework bomb, briefly backlighting the form of a woman standing over Azaka's head. The figure raised a foot to stomp on her enemy.

"_Fortissimo!_"

Given a form she could see, even with her body unresponsive, Azaka could still blast them into the next life.

* * *

Despite wearing the face and body of a simple police officer, he had the uncanny stare of one who knew death and murder. For that, Shiki was grateful.

He charged. She swung out of the way and tried smashing her elbow into the back of his head. He contorted as he flew past, flipped forward, struck her arm with his foot, and reset himself upright as she regained her own balance. Before she could make another move, he swept in again, jabbing with the snap baton like it was a spearhead. Each stab she blocked and parried at his wrist with her own, and once an opening presented itself, reached back, unsheathed her blade, and slashed in one motion.

No chance. He was dancing back out of her reach the moment her stance shifted, the edge of her knife missing his face by an arm span.

The SHIKI presence was mocking. _No sword? Well, I suppose I was always the better at it._

Shiki flipped the knife in her hand, eyes glaring ethereal light.

That must have been the decision to abandon the bodies of the monks for the police officers. Assassins within the bodies of monks that did not practice any kind of kenpo were limited; assassins inhabiting public servants that had self-defense training and fitter bodies was a step up. If they took hold of Shiki's body, they would be right back to what they had in life.

Not that she thought the Nanaya before her was at a deficit. In fact, he moved just marginally faster than Shiki could, putting her on the defensive. His strange choices were not the type made by a swordsman, a duelist, a martial artist, or any kind of combatant that fought in warfare. Instead, he seemed to work abstractly with a thought process entirely alien to even one like Shiki.

When he closed in on her again, it was not a charge or even some kind of test-strike to feel out the situation once more. The closest comparison Shiki had to it was like a capoeira practitioner, weaving a low set of feints to either side before coming up with the baton right to her groin. Moving too fast and strangely to strike at the weapon's lines, Shiki blocked with the pommel of her knife, batting the attack aside and out of line with her body. It gave her an opening to step in and stab him right in the chest or face with the blade.

Which did not work. Before she could land the blow, his foot came around like a hook, scorpion-kicking her in the shoulder—if a scorpion had a tail that went horizontal rather than from above its body. Shiki rolled aside, her attack did as well, and they ended up back to square one, a meter or so separating them.

Shiki glared as if her eyes could themselves cut him to pieces. The Nanaya that remained in the world were supposed to be the betters of the other families with histories of demon slaying, remaining true to their task as the others fell apart. Shiki's own training was that of tradition rather than for use in hunting—she simply ended up applying it like none of her immediate ancestors had.

This one had seen combat, real wet-work, in his lifetime and now in death. His initial blow would have been enough to have ripped right up into her stomach and destroy her like the gruesome monsters they were.

A faint smile.

"Monsters," Shiki said.

_Half-alive, you are the monster. Live fully, or die together, as it should be._

The hypocrisy within seemed tinged with irony and sarcasm. He wanted to live just as much as she did, yet found himself in an equal-and-opposite position.

For a split second, Shiki hesitated. He wanted to live.

He had wanted to live, too…yet had chosen death.

With that distraction, her attacker was on the move—his own eyes seeing her thoughts shift—and before she could react those eyes were right in her face. Guarding against the quick one-two blows to her right kept her from seeing how he contorted his body to conceal his left and from behind his back, grabbed her free wrist with something cold and metallic. Shiki pulled her arm straight up and found it handcuffed. Nanaya spun in place to let his own arm get dragged along, the cuff's matching link around his left wrist.

Shiki kept her gaze on the baton lest her focus earn her death by distraction. She jabbed in return, mirroring the same fast slashes Nanaya made on her before. He avoided with the same body-contortion as before, moving like one bereft of solid bones.

_I'll drag you down and you'll lift me up, just like before._

The feeling shifted once more to SHIKI, to that part missing from her, yet always tainting her thoughts and feelings like a well-worn scar marred the skin.

"Shut up," Shiki growled.

Still connected, Shiki tried pulling while jabbing, tried off-balancing her opponent, but his balance matched her own, counter-pulling and flinging his weight side-to-side. He nearly wrapped her up like he was her dance partner, their arms snaking around Shiki's body, and only a last-minute deflection from her knife kept his baton from smashing her head in.

The sensation of words shifted back to the unfamiliar feeling. _I'll keep him for you when I take you._

"No." Shiki kicked at his feet with a jujutsu footwork routine that, if he did not seem to have the balance of a monkey, would have given her the leverage to flip him over her shoulder and leave him prone to a quick end. He instead managed to kick his feet right up into her thigh, bouncing the attack back and sending them both flying. Shiki let herself get pulled along, then dug her feet into the ground as Nanaya planted his feet into a gravestone and aimed for a rebound strike.

Shiki got her knife between them and had enough time to hit the lines she wanted.

Nanaya shot past her and she fell back so both her shoulders hit the earth and her feet stayed flat. The handcuffs chaining them together severed. Shiki watched upside-down as the man rolled away, his baton split in half, the pieces crumbling away like dust blown away.

…But in their exchange, as Shiki had destroyed the cuff links and then the baton, this Nanaya had struck her hand and forced her to drop the knife. In the same motion he had swept away the weapon with his own freed hand, all in a flash.

_I always was the better of us_, the SHIKI-sensation mocked.

"You're not him," Shiki said. "Even if you can see echoes in me and your brother and sister could implant that in you, he's truly gone."

Such words, even as she spoke them to defy her enemy, were more like a slash to her own throat.

_Undeniably, either way, we are both the better at facing death._

Shiki closed her eyes, unable to help herself—imagining that nothingness, the emptiness afterward, the cold that terrified her. Always there, where he should be, only there because he was as this Nanaya said: better at facing it.

Nanaya took a low stance, one Shiki recognized from her own training. Not the specifics of what was to come, but the way it was to carry him. To victory.

"And I'm the better at _making_ it." Shiki spun the non-existent knife in her hand, mirroring the stance of the form before her. Knees bent, arm extended, blade in a low guard, pale blue gaze meeting pale blue gaze.

That same strange, animal-like speed shot forward. The knife went flying her way as if rocketed from a firearm. The man disappeared from her line of vision.

Yet, just like SHIKI had without any special eyes, she peered toward death.

Shiki was a hair's breadth slower, leaping and inverting, hand reaching out. Even if she could not see his physical form, she could still see what led to his final moment.

She blocked his inhuman grab for her with her prosthetic arm. She reached down, caught the knife, and brought it up in a cut.

The swing went wide. They crashed into one another—with Shiki gaining the better placement, her fake arm far stronger than his wraith-inhabited body. They hit the ground, Ryougi half-astride the echoes of the last Nanaya.

"You've had seven nights," Shiki said, almost involuntarily. "Now get lost."

* * *

SHIKI was gone from her mind by the time she had wiped her knife clean. Something of a byproduct from the transient nature of wraiths, or the way the Pure Eyes worked to cast a reflection of read thoughts and memories, or something else—she was not sure. Whatever it was, it seemed as if the strange presence had removed itself from her mind.

Like it was not even there.

Emptiness, once again.

In the same vein as grasping for a memory just out of reach, Shiki only felt a foul sense of frustration. Her urge to truly kill something now felt on the rise.

"He made a second you," Azaka said. She pulled herself out of the gloom, victorious and bruised all over, favoring one leg. "Ugh."

Perhaps, just maybe, a tiny spark of amusement could be made in Shiki's glare. If there was, she killed it fast enough that it did not show for long. "I thought you would be more respectful of the dead."

Azaka scrunched up her face. "You're not dead yet."

Shiki flipped her knife around in hand, gaze drifting to where Azaka had left the Nanaya siblings she had defeated. They were still alive—barely—and it was left to Shiki to finish the job. "Go find—"

"Go find a phone and call Touko-san, yeah, yeah." The younger girl did as suggested, taking the shrine stairs in twos, but kept talking as if Shiki followed along. "Although, if you're offering, I'm sure I could find it in me to be remorseful at your funeral, sad that you could leave this world with such bad karma. Knowing we could have been such great friends if it weren't for that awful personality of yours…"

Shiki snorted. The girl was probably right.

However.

She wasn't dead.

Not yet, anyway.

* * *

Akitaka bowed his head as he accepted the note from Shiki.

"No hurry," Shiki said. She was certain she looked as grumpy as she felt, though, the fight still fresh on her mind even after a couple of days to get over it.

Things like that always came at inopportune moments, that was a certainty. Perhaps it was just in her destiny somehow.

The sharp-dressed man excused himself from the apartment, taking the request she made to her father with him. Shiki closed the door behind him, then made a beeline for her icebox.

Recovery time was really not an issue. While Azaka had returned to Reien with a bruised backside and an amusing dress-down from Touko regarding property damage that came out of their paycheck, Shiki had not suffered anything that a stretch the next day could not solve. Even the manhandling from being handcuffed had gone to her prosthetic and healed perfectly fine. So well, in fact, that for payment, she had asked Touko to make an addition to it so that she would not be left without a weapon again. The request to her family was of the same mindset, especially with how her shortcomings in the fight had presented themselves.

Yet she felt unusually restless. If she had a carpeted floor, it would certainly have a divot worn into it from pacing.

Not wanting to die.

Wanting to kill.

The dead returning.

The dead staying dead.

Touko once said that it meant that she could be filled. Filled with what, exactly? She felt like she might even breach the subject with the magus at some point, yet some part of her still felt terrified at the prospect of doing so.

Or Mikiya.

Scowling, Shiki went for her jacket. No point in thinking over such things like this when all she would do is run her mind into a wall and run her feet around in circles.

Perhaps she could rid herself of such a feeling if she found something to take her frustrations out on.

A thought of Mikiya shaking his head and telling her she should not go out at such a late hour flashed through her mind. The hypocrite.

The fight had only served to make her feel more restless rather than satiate the desire she had to face a challenge. Azaka had complained about how getting to be out and use her newfound talents came at the price of annoyance. Shiki was now inclined to agree.

Red jacket wrapped around her body, she departed in search of trouble.

* * *

October, 1998


End file.
